


Another Gone Before Me

by dinolaur



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, canon character death, other vintage characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 20:32:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5389262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinolaur/pseuds/dinolaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's always the cold of winter that takes from Peggy Carter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Gone Before Me

She hardly hangs up the phone before running out the door. She doesn’t pack a bag, barely manages to remember her purse, and leaves no message for her husband. It will be on the news, and he will know where she has gone and why she left.

The cab ride to the airport, waiting at the gate, the flight, all of it happens in a blur. She doesn’t really feel anything right now, although there is a part of her that knows when it hits, it will hit harder than anything has in a long time. She has had and lost so much in her life. He has been there the longest, not always right by her side, but still with her, and she doesn’t know how she is supposed to get through this.

When Peggy arrives at the Stark Mansion, it is Anna who answers the door. She smiles at the sight of Peggy, but it’s not happy at all. She holds out a hand, the one not clutching a wet handkerchief, and Peggy squeezes it tightly. “The kitchen,” Anna answers the unspoken question.

She can hear the loud clinking of china before she enters the room. It’s something that he would normally be appalled over, but today is not a normal day. He is as properly dressed as always, but his hair is out of sorts, and his face is red and wet. “Edwin,” Peggy says gently, and he turns sharply to face her.

“Oh, Mrs. Carter,” he says and promptly bursts into tears. She walks briskly around the island and wraps him up in a tight hug. “I’m sorry,” he blubbers. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, hush now,” Peggy says, voice tight in her throat. She wants to cry with him.

“I should have been there,” Jarvis says. “I should have driven. Mr. Stark, oh, you know how he is—was.” His voice cracks. “So reckless and foolish. I should have been there.”

“No, Edwin,” Peggy says. “The roads were wet and icy. It was an accident. You’d have been killed as well.”

For another few moments, he clings to her. Then he pulls back, muttering another apology for her jacket. His hand goes up for his pocket square, and he scowls to find it missing. Peggy almost smiles. Even so upset he can’t bring himself to wipe his face with his hands or sleeves. She reaches around and pulls a fresh dishtowel from a drawer.

“Yes, thank you,” Jarvis says, taking it from her and attempting to clean up. “There’s—er—there’s quite a bit to do. We must inform the board, make arrangements for the funeral, get the lawyers ready. And Anthony. I must go pick up Anthony.”

All the blood in Peggy’s veins turns to ice for the second time that day. Unless he has seen the news, Tony doesn’t know about the accident. The boy doesn’t know that his parents are dead.

``

The drive up to Cambridge is silent. Peggy refuses to let Jarvis drive, despite all his protests. He is in no state, and they don’t need another accident on their hands. He sits in the passenger seat, fingers twisting around a handkerchief. He hasn’t really stopped crying, and Peggy hasn’t yet been able to start. Her hands are wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, and she tries for hours to mentally prepare how they are going to break the news to Tony. Nothing sounds right. This isn’t like any of the condolence letters she has signed over the years, even to the families of agents she was close to. This is Howard and Maria. She doesn’t even know the words to say how she feels, much less how she should console a teenage boy.

The RA has to let them into Tony’s room. Peggy then blocks him from entering with them. This is going to be a private moment. It’s dark in the room, despite the early morning hour. Tony is still asleep. One look at the boy—and all she can see is his wild mess of dark hair peeking out from under his blankets—and Peggy can feel her resolve slipping. She is about to break.

Luckily, the sight of Tony seems to have the opposite effect on Jarvis. His spine goes straight, and he takes in a deep, steady breath. Then he kneels down by the bed and slowly shakes the boy awake. It takes a few minutes to get Tony to emerge from his cocoon. Just like his father, Peggy thinks dizzily. He is just like Howard in the mornings. He doesn’t sleep enough. His brain moves too fast and his body can barely keep up, and when he does it takes almost an act of God and a lot of coffee to get him back to a place where he can interact with the world again.

Tony rubs at his eyes, face scrunched up. “Jarvis, what—?”

“I’m afraid I have some bad news, Anthony,” Jarvis says.

It jolts Tony awake. He stares at Jarvis for a long moment before looking up at Peggy. She can see exactly when it clicks that this isn’t a dream and that he hasn’t misheard. Peggy being there makes it real. She is Tony’s godmother, but she doesn’t spend as much time with the family as she thinks she should have. She lives in D.C., and the Starks are in New York. It’s not really so far a distance, especially with their jets. But she was the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and still consults, which doesn’t lend much free time. Howard has both S.H.I.E.L.D. and Stark Industries to worry about.

Tony cries, but he tries so hard not to. He drops his chin to his chest, shoulders hunched up. He shakes, his entire body trembling with the effort to keep the emotions down. Jarvis holds him, rocking him as though he were still a small child.

The drive back to New York is no better than the drive up. This time Jarvis is at the wheel. Peggy thinks for a moment that she will sit in the back with Tony, but he shuts the door almost violently behind him. He stretches his lanky legs across the seats, arms crossed and shoulders around his ears. No one says anything. Peggy watches Tony in the mirror. He rubs his eyes, under his nose, and then shoves his hand angrily back under his arm.

Tony goes right up to his room and locks the door. He won’t talk to any of them and refuses the lunch Jarvis makes. The phone line in his room is in constant use, and Peggy wants to pick it up. She wants to know who he is talking to, what is going through his mind, because she feels so useless right now in a way that hasn’t happened in so long. Her oldest friend is gone. There is nothing that anyone could have done to prevent it, but she wants to hit someone, tear into something the way she used to when she was younger.

Obadiah Stane comes by, and Peggy wants to turn him away. She has never particularly liked Stane and cared for him less and less with each of Howard’s ever increasing complaints, even as paranoid as they seemed. She never thought him as potentially dangerous as Howard did, just an oily businessman. And Peggy has known more than her fair share of oily men in positions of power. She doesn't like them, but they are unavoidable. But Tony lets Stane talk to him, and maybe it's just grief, maybe she is just too thrown by the fact that Howard is gone, but Peggy wants to investigate him like she always told Howard was unnecessary.

Too little, too late.

``

The funeral is set for three days later. Peggy knows the turnout will be overwhelming, between Howard's military and S.H.I.E.L.D. colleagues, Maria's charities, and the general society with which they had interacted. Peggy spends her time pouring over the police reports and hospital records. There is nothing to indicate any manner of foul play. The roads were wet and icy, and Howard was an old man who still drove like he was in his twenties. It wouldn't make Peggy feel better to find inconsistencies; it would be so, so much worse, but she can't help it. It makes her feel like she is doing something useful with herself. Because if she doesn't do something, doesn't distract herself from the burning absence of her oldest friend, she might lose her mind.

Her husband flies up to the city, getting a hotel room in midtown. Her brother calls and asks if she needs anything. There's nothing to be done, but she asks to talk to her niece, and she nearly breaks down hearing Sharon's little voice tell her that she loves her and everything will be all right.

Three days go by, and the decanter in Howard's office, full when she arrived, steadily empties. Two of the glasses are broken. Tony still won't talk to either her or Jarvis.

The morning of the funeral is cold, but there isn't a cloud in the sky. Peggy squints behind sunglasses, almost deliriously offended that the sun dares to shine so cheerfully on a day like this. There are still some patches of dirty snow on the sidewalks, but nothing else to indicate the recent bad weather that contributed to Peggy's most recent personal losses.

Peggy and Jarvis sit with Tony in the front row, the boy's eyes locked on the closed caskets. His eyes are red--not red from crying, Peggy can tell--bags heavy under his eyes. Whatever semblance of presentability he has managed has been brought about by Jarvis's hand. His hands shake under Jarvis's as the church fills up with black clad mourners.

The service and mass go by in an odd sort of blur. Peggy doesn't know that she will be able to recall any particular details. The gravesite doesn't feel any clearer. Tony receives condolences on behalf of Stark Industries employees, the board, Howard's military contacts, Maria's various organizations, and the socialites. The line seems never ending, and Tony just blankly accepts every extended hand. He doesn't seem to actually see anything until another young man, just a few years older than him perhaps, walks up. Tony jumps up, colliding with him, and Peggy just watches. She wonders how Tony knows him, who he is that Tony feels comfortable enough with him to curl into his side, bury his face into his neck, and shake apart. Tony has only ever been so connected to two people in his life, to Jarvis and to Maria. Not to Howard. And Peggy hasn't been much of a godmother to him since he was small.

She wants so badly to talk to him. Her experiences with his parents differ so much from his own, but she wants to talk to him. She wants to tell him everything that she knew about them; she wants to hear everything he knew. No one could ever question that Tony loved Maria and that she adored her son in return, but Howard, he had fallen down so far in the last couple of decades, and Peggy doesn't think Tony understands. She knows how Howard was, never good with personal relationships in general and somehow becoming worse and worse with practice. Tony doesn't understand. Peggy wants him to.

She wants him to know that things will eventually be ok, and she wants someone to convince her of that too.

``

"How're you holding up, English," Angie asks, pushing the bourbon along the table into Peggy's waiting hands.

Peggy doesn't have an answer, not a satisfactory one anyway. To say she is fine would be an obvious lie, one that every person at the table would see through with ease. But she doesn't have the words to really say anything of this hole in her heart.

"It was a pretty service," Morita says awkwardly. "Although I'm sure that was more for Stark's old lady than him."

Dum-Dum makes a face, his bushy moustache twitching. "I'm sure she was a lovely lady--how Stark landed her, fuck if I could guess--but that preacher ever even meet the old coot? Not to speak ill of the dead, of course."

Morita and Gabe snort into their glasses, and Angie hides her smile behind a hand, patting Peggy's shoulder. This is supposed to be normal, isn't it? Not every moment after the death of loved ones can be darkened by grief. They have to laugh too, don't they? After all, this isn't like some of the other deaths they have suffered through, friends taken too soon. Howard and Maria lived full lives. So Peggy sits there, listening to the Commandos regale Angie with old wartime stories, foolish things Howard got himself into, scrapes that the team had to pull him out of, things that would have landed the rest of them in a court martial, but Howard got to walk away from with a smile and a jolly whistle. Angie laughs and laughs, tells them about the Howard she met after the war, of Hollywood, of spies, and how she really could have written a hell of a screen play on all the things she saw.

Peggy listens and wonders when she will be able to laugh or cry or feel something other than this heavy weight in her stomach.

``

There is no rest after the funeral. Peggy can consult with Pierce and Fury and handle all the S.H.I.E.L.D. side of things, but there is so much more to be done. Maria's money and assets are uncontested, and none of her limited family tries to stand in the way of Tony receiving his proper inheritance.

Stark Industries is different.

With Maria also dead and Tony still not twenty-one, Jarvis and Peggy are the executors of Howard's estate. There is so much to do to insure that Tony receives everything he is meant to, but people fight them on every front. Tony is too young, they say, too unstable, too inexperienced. Yes, he is as gifted as Howard, so let him work in R&D for a while, leave running the company to them, to Stane.

That Peggy fights viciously. Howard didn't trust Stane. Howard believed firmly that Tony would be the person to usher in a completely new era of technological advancement, that Tony would do things even Howard couldn't conceive of. Peggy fights like she hasn't fought since people looked at her and expected her to just take lunch orders. It's the last thing she can do for her oldest friend and what Tony deserves.

In the end, Tony becomes the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company ever, and Peggy feels decades older than her years.

``

The tears don't fall until she gets back to Washington, until she walks through snow covered rows of graves all decorated with green wreaths. She has made this trek so many times in her life. It's been decades since she needed to consult a directory to get to this spot. Two graves, indistinguishable from the others around them, made that way greatly in part because of her and Howard's efforts. They had known better than anyone how unappreciative the two men who weren't able to be buried under these slabs would have been of the monument some people had called for at the end of the war.

Peggy raises a flask to her lips, the one she had carried through the war, the one she had shared with them all. She takes a sip, and the tears run in hot trails down her frozen cheeks. "He's yours to look after now, my boys," she toasts.


End file.
